Regulation 2231b
by A-Frosted-One
Summary: After the Wizarding War, the Quidditch League struggled to find enough players to go around. Written for the /r/HarryandGinny Sunlit Days challenge.
1. Chapter 1

Regulation 2231b of the British and Irish Quidditch League was introduced after complaints from several prominent donors to the League when The Quiberon Quafflepunchers, who had transferred that year after minimal success in the French Leagues, won the 1721 Quidditch League of Greate Britain without letting their opponents score a single point across their 13 matches. Rather than question what exactly about the European Quidditch Leagues was so superior that it allowed Britain's best teams to be so thoroughly humiliated by what was considered by all rights to be a mediocre team in France, it was instead decided that in order to prevent the Quafflepunchers from playing, the League would adopt a modified version of Article 50 of the Chudley Cannons' constitution which required all members of the team to be born in Devonshire. This rule, in itself, was originally formulated to protect the founding members of the Cannons from replacement, as had happened to the Appleby Arrows a few years prior. As such, on the 18th of July, 1721, upon ratification by two thirds of the member teams, Regulation 2231 of the British and Irish Quidditch League was expanded to the following:

**Regulation 2231**

All Teams, as defined under Regulation 15a, must be composed of seven (7) wizards, and may optionally contain another seven (7) substitute wizards.

**Amendment 2231a**

Teams may be composed of either wizards or witches, or a combination of both.

**Amendment 2231b**

At any given point in a match, at most 75%, or three-quarters, of the members of a Team who are In Play, as defined in Regulation 45c, must have been born within Great Britain.

Because Hogwarts House Quidditch teams provided more than enough graduates to fill all 14 teams of the British and Irish League, these regulations went largely unchanged for several centuries, except from the occasional update when the Muggle governing bodies of the British Isles decided to change their names and inadvertently put every team in breach of the regulation. At some point in the late 18th Century, in attempts to end a then-uncharacteristic losing streak, the Cannons amended their own Article 50 to bring it in line with the League's regulation 2231b and subsequently placed in the top 3 positions for 7 consecutive leagues.

The period between Grindelwald's fall and Voldemort's first rise was one of great growth for British Quidditch, as more and more households found themselves with significantly more gold to spare for season tickets and merchandise. The Quidditch scene was also left largely untouched throughout the First Wizarding War, since Lord Voldemort considered such games as far beneath his notice, and most of his death eaters had financial ties to one team or another, it was of little benefit to him to target Quidditch specifically. Of course, the occasional player was caught in the crossfire, but even the muggle-born professionals were generally left alone as long as they didn't actively fight against Voldemort or his servants.

This lack of interference left the Quidditch scene in a highly advantageous position after the initial downfall of Voldemort. Few other industries had been so unaffected by the war, and for many months Quidditch was the only form of entertainment available with which the Wizarding community could celebrate their newfound peace, and even those witches and wizards who had previously spurned the sport often found themselves with little better to do than attend a game. Ticket sales rose steadily over the course of the following fifteen years of peacetime, only once dipping slightly following the events of the 1994 World Cup, but even this was short-lived as the participation of star Bulgarian seeker Viktor Krum in the Triwizard Tournament brought a new surge of interest to the scene, with no signs of slowing by the beginning of the Second Wizarding War.

Voldemort's return left Britain reeling, and while he again paid little attention to professional Quidditch, the widespread destruction still left more than a few teams down by several players, with one particularly unfortunate incident with an exploded bar causing the deaths of both the starting and reserve beaters of four separate teams. On top of this the strict curfews and frequent corporal punishment of students at Hogwarts under Death Eater control left little opportunity for anyone other than the Slytherin House team to even mount a broomstick for the majority of the year, to the extent that the House Quidditch Cup was little more than a farce to boost morale for the Slytherin team before the games were eventually cancelled altogether. The destruction caused by the Battle of Hogwarts did little to alleviate this lack of practice, as the Quidditch Pitch's status as a non-essential feature of the school meant that it was left in disrepair for nearly the entire year while the portions of the castle more necessary for day to day studies were rebuilt, finally reopening over the Easter Holidays. While the six matches required for the House Cup were successfully squeezed into the remaining term, the short timeframe combined with mandatory exams left practice sessions highly limited. This combined with the previous year's limitations on recreational activities meant that for many students, the official matches were their first time on a broomstick in nearly two years, and it certainly showed. One such match between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff lasted well over six hours, as neither seeker seemed able to spot the snitch, let alone chase it. The game was finally ended during a penalty shot, when the Hufflepuff keeper completely missed the Quaffle and instead plucked the golden snitch from the air in a Snitchnip foul, granting the win to Ravenclaw.

While under normal circumstances, such a large demand for players or a complete lack of skilled Hogwarts graduates would be of little concern for the league, as teams would respectively recruit a larger selection of Hogwarts students or simply delay playing without reserves until the following years, the combination of the two left many teams simply unable to present a full squad. Many ideas to solve the player deficit were floated and immediately shot down in the weeks prior to the transfer deadlines, from merging some of the understaffed teams (met with fury from the sponsors) to reducing the players present on the pitch (provoking outrage from the fans) to even simply cancelling that year's league altogether (the mere idea leading to riots in the streets), but none were found to be acceptable enough to pass even a simple majority vote. Eventually, with the end of the transfer window looming, the League Commission agreed that there was no perfect solution available and instead went for the imperfect solution of revoking Regulation 2231b, allowing international players to join the British and Irish League teams. While this lead to uproar from some sectors of the Quidditch community, the angriest people by far were mostly the pure-blooded traditionalist types, and since everyone was pretty sick of their nonsense after Voldemort's wars and the subsequent clean-up, they were largely ignored. Besides, it wasn't as if any of them could afford to properly bribe the Commissioner anymore.

And so it was that on Sunday the First of August, 1999, Regulation 2231b of the British and Irish Quidditch League was repealed, leaving just a week for each of the League's teams to scramble to fill their rosters before the registration period ended. By the following Friday, every team had managed to pull together a full squad, all except one, perpetually unfortunate, orange-clad crew. While the Chudley Cannons had put out no end of offers to international players, a series of incidents strange even by the standards of professional Quidditch had prevented them actually signing anyone. After Narizuvach Hravets, the star chaser of the Ukrainian national team had to be sent to St. Mungos when the contract he was meant to be signing exploded into flames, the team manager brought in a squad of Gringotts' curse breakers in hopes of tracking down the source of their problems before the transfer deadline. While the issue was quickly determined to be the result of a breach of magical constitution, it took nearly 24 hours of poring over assorted Quidditch bylaws before the Cannons' own Article 50 was found to be the culprit. By this point, it was far too late to even send an unsolicited contract by Express International Elf Post, even if there had been time to call a general meeting of the Chudley Cannons board to amend the offending rule, so a frantic, last-minute search worthy of a procrastinating University student ensued to find a British-born chaser within the six hours that remained.


	2. Chapter 2

A series of crashes and bangs reminiscent of an impromptu fireworks display at a drum-only concert permeated the Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes stockroom and threatened to spill through the silencing wards into Diagon Alley itself. With a barrage of swears sufficient to make even Charlie blush, Ginny Weasley stormed through the door from the mercifully closed shopfront, her wand raised in the hope of saving some small fraction of the highly volatile merchandise, preferably without getting caught too much in the crossfire. It may have been funny when it was just her and Harry in their flat, but she did not want to have their date night interrupted by her hair suddenly deciding to cycle through every possible colour of the rainbow, and a few impossible ones too, in the middle of a muggle restaurant.

It was fifteen minutes past the end of her shift, and Ginny was cursing her brother's name quite ferociously as she searched the now mostly tidy room for the rogue Tickety-Tack (The Original Silencing-proof annoyance aid) which she could only assume was the source of the lone tapping sound which echoed throughout the room. She'd told George weeks ago that the shelves needed replacing, but he'd ignored her and stacked even more rubbish on them, and now she was going to be late for their reservation. She searched fruitlessly for a few minutes more, before throwing her hands up in resignation. Her lout of a brother could deal with it himself in the morning. She turned to leave, glancing up to the window to judge whether she should grab a cloak for the short walk to the apparition point, when the sight froze her mid-step. Owls never came to her at work, she'd had everything non-urgent sent straight to the flat for weeks, and Harry mirror-called her for anything urgent, so she was sure the owl tapping indignantly at the window could only mean one thing. Harry was hurt.

She took the note in trembling hands, barely noticing the claw marks left in her shoulder by the owl's intentionally aggressive take-off. Her fingers traced the lettering on the front of the envelope, which had managed to find more ways to say 'urgent' than she could ever have imagined possible, as she took several deep breaths in an attempt to stop her fingers shaking, or at least calm them enough that she could open the letter without tearing it. She cracked the seal, flipped the parchment open and flicked her eyes across the page for pertinent information. Quidditch? Why was the note on Harry's injury talking about Quidditch? And why didn't it mention Harry? She took a few more breaths and read the letter again, more slowly this time. The fear shifted to shock then elation as she read it through again, then a third time just to be sure, before carefully folding the parchment up and apparating straight from the backroom of the shop to the living room of the flat with a loud crack, causing Harry to spill his butterbeer on the sofa as he hurriedly trained his wand on the source of the disturbance for the few moments it took before he visibly relaxed as he recognised her, calming even further as he saw the look on her face.

"Bloody hell, Gin, I could've blasted you into next week. What's so urgent you had to nearly give me a heart attack?"

"I got a spot, Harry, look, it's even a starting role!" She thrust the letter into his still-damp hands and watched eagerly as he read through it, not caring to stop herself bouncing on the balls of her feet at the grin lighting up her fiancé's face, before she came to a standstill as he lowered the parchment and solemnly looked up at her.

"You're going to take this job no matter what, aren't you?"

"Why? What's wrong with it?" She grabbed the letter back, frantically searching for any issue she might have missed.

"Nothing much, I was just thinking about how insufferable Ron's going to be when the Cannons finally win the league."


	3. Chapter 3

If Quidditch games were won on effort alone, the Chudley Cannons may well have topped the British and Irish League every year. Unfortunately for Ronald Weasley, President by walkover of the Chudley Cannons Fan Club since the previous president was arrested on May 3rd, 1998, Quidditch games were largely scored by one player of each team's abilities to catch a small golden ball, with the occasional input of the rest of the team working significantly harder to score largely irrelevant goals. These two parts were where Ginny Weasley's new team had historically run into difficulties, and she was determined to help solve one of those two issues, even if it was the one which had very little bearing on the game's outcome. The evening after she signed her new contract, she had vowed to Harry in no uncertain terms that she was going to be the first to arrive and last to leave from every practice, and she would not rest until the Chudley Cannons managed to win a game that season. After gaining a reassurance that the comment about 'not resting' was a hyperbole, Harry agreed to do everything in his power to help her keep the oath.

And so it was that at just before 5:30 on the morning of her first practice, Ginny found herself dragged from a beautiful dream by a series of teasing kisses down her back. While she was certainly happy to be woken this way at a reasonable time, say 12:30, she was decidedly not happy at this specific moment, and as such decided to focus all the 'not happy' she could muster at being interrupted in the middle of Dream Harry's workout straight onto the apparent source of the issue, who happened to be the much more real version of Harry and whose lips were still steadily making their way towards her backside. She had, of course, conveniently ignored the fact that the only reason she was being woken up at this hour in the first place was that she had asked him to do so, but to her sleep deprived brain it seemed perfectly unreasonable that Harry had actually done as she'd asked.

"Uuuuurgh, Haarreeee. Lemme sleep," She blinked at him as furiously as she could, hopefully conveying the extent of the fury he would be facing for waking her up if she weren't so groggy from being woken up. "Youuu were about to start doin pullll upps."

Unfortunately for her soporific viewing of Dream Harry's abdomen, Real Harry was either much too brave or much too foolish to respond properly to the clearly murderous intent of her lethargic slurring. Chuckling was not nearly the effect she had been going for, and if she were in any state to be casting Bat Bogeys she would have made sure he was very aware of that.

"I'll do all the pullups you want later, Gin, but you need to get up for Quidditch practice."

His words caught in one of the few active portions of her angular gyrus, which, after a few moments of figuring out what exactly a Quidditch was and how it could ever be worth missing out on her fiancée's imaginary body, drew itself into a frenzy as it stressed to the rest of her brain just how important it was for it to get up RIGHT NOW. While most of her grey matter responded with suitable urgency, the paraventricular nucleus, ever the contrarian, argued very fervently that sleep was far more important than anything else it could be doing, and cracked off a series of incredible yawns to prove it. Nevertheless, the paraventricular found itself outvoted, and was left to grumble to itself as Ginny, with almost no help from Harry, dragged her still-sleepy body upright and took the steaming cup of coffee her fiancée offered.

By the time Ginny had taken a quick shower, dried and dressed herself, realised her jersey was on backwards and dressed herself again, and stepped out of the door, it was just gone 6 o'clock, an hour before her practice began. She took the opportunity to apparate to the stadium side-along with Harry, a slower and more complex affair than standard apparition with the distinct advantage of providing a fantastic excuse for Ginny to wrap herself around her partner. She felt the familiar squeeze before they landed with a soft crack in the Chudley Stadium.

Seeing as they were nearly an hour early, the field was completely deserted and likely would be for a considerable period. After a few moments of thought in which she briefly considered dragging Harry back to the flat or down to the changing rooms for a far more intimate warmup, Ginny sighed and started to jog laps around the pitch. She was slightly surprised when Harry joined her rather than watch from the stands as she had expected, but if he wanted to provide some eye candy she wasn't about to take a Hippogriff by the wing. He kept pace with her warmup for nearly half an hour, before giving her a reluctant kiss goodbye as he headed off to work.

By the time the rest of the team arrived, Ginny was thoroughly awake, something she sorely regretted a few hours later as she watched one of the beaters collide with the goalposts for the third time in barely ten minutes. If she were still groggy perhaps she could have explained away the sheer incompetence on display as some perverse nightmare, but in her state of energetic alertness every fumbled quaffle, missed bludger and lost snitch was painfully real. At least Harry wasn't here to see the time she'd almost knocked the keeper from his broom with her particularly frustratedly thrown quaffle, or she had a feeling she would have endured months of teasing over following in George's footsteps. On the other hand, it would have been nice to have somebody to share a good moan and groan with every time the seeker hurtled across to the wrong side of the pitch in search of some imaginary glint of gold, when Ginny could clearly see the snitch fluttering leisurely over the stands. By the time the coach blew the whistle for the end of practice, Ginny finally thought she understood how Harry had felt in his year as Quidditch Captain. At the very least, it was some relief that she hadn't quite had to trade a concussion for that nugget of wisdom, however close she had come to flying straight into a bludger just to get out of the rest of the horror show of a practice. Her vow that the team would win one game that season might need some rethinking. Perhaps they could hope for a draw.


End file.
